As the Wired posts note, there is still a pending motion to dismiss that needs to be resolved before the scheduled May 18 sentencing. In light of all these developments, I would guess that the district judge will deny the motion to dismiss, but then impose a sentence of probation. But this is just a guess (and done before reading the parties' papers linked above) based on my instinct that the district judge will want to find a viable way to "split the baby" in this high-profile case.

Comments

You signed on to miscellaneous internet service contracts. Survey questions.

1) Has any lawyer here read them, as I have?

2) Has anyone here not been in material breach of one of them, or of all of them?

3) By your material breach, you have defrauded the provider, and face criminal prosecution for your contract breach. Is that OK with the lawyers here?

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That is the Drew case

Here is something else, off topic, but related to internet user agreements. Everyone here, including the author of the Supremacy character, has pledged to indemnify the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, to the last button on the last shirt, for all legal expenses they incur from any user activity. Is that OK with the lawyers here? You, the little guy, are providing business liability insurance to large internet providers to the limit of your assets, at no cost to the provider. The value of the insurance has enriched these providers by $trillions over the years (the cost of insuring their business liability in the amount of all the assets of all the users). Is that OK?

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If you like the above, if you feel justice is being served, thank a lawyer.

To #3 above, please, add, the contract breach is fraud, but with "strict liability," since no intent to induce a suicide or to physically injure was proven. Is that OK, strict criminal liability for a material breach of an internet user agreement?

[Before you say it, I know. I am a hypocrite. I am using a supernatural, non-existent core doctrine as an argument. This is the sewer we swim in. Until someone lifts the law onto the doctrines of the physical world, that is the sewer environment of our courts.]

Not to sound too much like S.Cotus on the importance of Bluebooking, but I'm a little disappointed a brief signed by someone of Orin Kerr's caliber abbreviated E.D. Va. "E.D. Vir." Really?

Posted by: Jay | May 7, 2009 2:56:33 AM

Lori Drew's case holds a lot of lessons for a lot of people. It is about cyberbullying, which is behavior for which society has little tolerance. Cyberbullying is poison for anyone it touches. An institution like Myspace -- or a library or a school, which provides patrons, students or guests access to the Internet -- has plentiful incentive to stamp out cyberbullying within its system and its PCs. Regardless of how the law says it (through a misdemeanor criminal conviction or otherwise), the law has made clear it wants to find a way to punish anyone involved with cyberbullying. --Ben Wright, attorney

Ben: What do you think about legal bullying, with the overwhelming majority of defendants having done nothing wrong, either in torts or in criminal law?

Do you support ending the privity obstacle to legal malpractice claims by adverse third parties? No other party but the lawyer has had this shield from accountability. As to the false argument that a lawyer cannot have a duty to the adverse third party, it is belied by 100's of enumerated duties to the adverse third party in the Rules of Conduct, of Criminal Procedure, of Civil Procedure, of Evidence, and in common law appellate holdings over hundreds of years. Biased, self-dealing judges saying there is no duty are lying.

Judges should also lose all immunities, since they are incompetents.

District attorneys should lose all discretions, and all immunities.

These are the biggest bullies. Let me have a single valid argument why they are immune.

Cyberbullying has full immunity from the Free Speech Clause. It also has nothing to do with the suicide of that girl. That suicide was a pretext for the extreme left wing lawyer to come after our freedoms.